Jeff Abbott - A Kiss Gone Bad

‘I know. Thanks. Can I give you a hand with the evidence case?’

‘Naw, I got it.’ He hoisted a box to his shoulder. ‘You coming?’

‘In a minute. I want another look around.’

Gardner headed out the door, grunting as he carried the box. ‘They’ve got Fox sitting out on the dock all night to watch the boat, make sure no one comes aboard.’

‘Great. Thanks, Eddie,’ she said.

In Pete’s bedroom, Claudia carefully flicked on a light, using the edge of her hand. Black fingerprint dust marked the most obvious spots: the light switch, the door handle, the metal nightstand table, where Gardner and the deputies helping out from the sheriff’s office had dusted and lifted prints. Thank God David wasn’t on duty. She didn’t want to see him up close and personal quite yet, and it would be impossible to avoid with her in the police department and him in the sheriff’s office.

The body and the bedding were gone. She opened the closet door. She pulled some of the files out of the box. The minutiae of everyday life: phone bills, store receipts, credit card slips, bank records, all haphazardly clumped together. Pete wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t destitute. He had a balance slightly over ten thousand dollars in his Van Nuys, California, account according to his most recent statement, and he’d opened a new account last week at the Texas Coastal Bank, Port Leo branch, with an opening balance of four thousand. She jotted down the Van Nuys address; she wanted to check with the police there about both Pete and Velvet. It bothered her that he was staying on a boat with ties to a criminal family. Such affiliations did not appear overnight with a snap of the fingers.

She was searching the main cabin when Gardner came back aboard.

‘Hey, Eddie, did you see a laptop computer?’ she asked.

Gardner inspected a handwritten inventory pulled from his pocket. ‘There was a small portable printer in the other room, but I didn’t see a computer.’

‘Help me look.’

Nothing turned up except some dust bunnies beneath a couch and a box of shotgun ammunition hidden in a back drawer.

‘Two people have told us Pete had a laptop and now he doesn’t,’ Claudia said.

They searched again, behind furniture, in closets, in cabinets, for another half hour.

‘I don’t think it’s here, Claudia.’

Claudia crossed her arms. ‘So where the hell is it?’

Early Tuesday morning Whit awoke to his father prodding at him with a thick finger.

‘Get up, little bit,’ Babe Mosley rumbled, and Whit was lost in a childhood moment, his father between wives, Whit being ordered to rise before dawn and fix Daddy a coffee with bourbon. Breakfast at the Mosleys’ had never been like in the cereal commercials.

Whit blinked at his father’s frown. ‘Shit. Did my alarm not go off?’ Hopefully he was still dreaming, if he was going to suffer being referred to as ‘little bit.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us last night?’ Babe demanded. Despite his childish nickname he was a big barrel of a man, close to six-five and two hundred fifty pounds. He boasted a full head of grayish blond hair and clear blue eyes, but the cherubic face had softened like a souring cheese, moldered more by the dozen-plus years he’d spent drunk. The vodka aged him more than the weight of raising six boys and marrying four wives. Years of sobriety, combined with an addiction to various fitness programs, had restored his vitality, but no medicine had erased the drunkard’s veins.

‘My son’s the goddamned judge – a job I got you, thank you kindly – and I have to hear that Pete Hubble is dead on the radio.’

Whit stumbled to the commode and luxuriated with a heavenly pee. Babe followed him to the doorway.

‘Daddy, I can’t talk about cases.’ Whit flushed the toilet and started the shower.

‘This is your golden opportunity, Whitman.’

Whit doffed his boxers and stepped into the hot spray. ‘Say what?’

‘Lucinda Hubble rules this county like Queen Bee Victoria. This story’s gonna be huge. It’s your chance to show the voters what you can do, boy.’

‘I thought that’s what I was doing for the past six months.’ Whit squirted shampoo into his hand and soaped his hair.

‘Yes, but this gets your name in the papers. Front page. You got to milk this, son. When you gonna do the inquest? You’ll want to do a formal one, not just issue a cause of death. Make sure the Corpus paper’s there. Get your photo taken a bunch, maybe at the crime scene. In your robe, and wear proper shoes for once. Issue press releases, all that.’ Babe rubbed his hands together. ‘That asswipe Buddy Beere must be shitting bricks with all this terrific publicity you’re gonna get.’

‘You get this morning’s merit badge for good taste,’ Whit said. ‘A man is dead, you know.’

‘I’m sorry for Pete and the Hubbles – you know that. What the hell was Pete doing back anyway? Where’s he been?’

‘Working for the CIA,’ Whit answered above the roar of the shower, to give Babe a meaty morsel. ‘Something about nuclear release codes in Ukraine. Perhaps we shouldn’t tell Irina.’

‘You’re not amusing to your daddy.’

‘Oddly enough, making you laugh about a death case wasn’t on my to-do list today. I got breakfast at the Shell Inn with Patsy and Tim.’

Babe frowned. ‘You tell Georgie to quit slinging mud all over town about poor helpless Irina.’

‘News flash. You not only remarry again but you fund a competing cafe. Of course she’s pissed at you.’ Whit rinsed shampoo from his head and soap from his body. Babe handed him a towel.

‘Georgie’ll forgive me – she always does. Women are far better at forgiving than men could ever be,’ Babe said.

Whit thought of Faith Hubble and wondered if that was really true.

The Shell Inn was an establishment one might generously term a half-breed. The front of the restaurant offered serviceable meals, catering to the fishing crowd and the retirees who refused to slap down more than five bucks for a meat-and-two-vegetable plate. The back contained a funky, dark bar that boasted its own atmosphere – breezes of bourbon, mists of beer, warm fronts of tobacco smoke. For the old guard of Port Leo the Shell Inn, which had been in continuous business since 1907 except the five times it was nearly destroyed by hurricanes, was a basic requirement of life in town, up there with a newspaper and water service.

Georgie O’Connor Mosley perched by the cash register, sipping milky coffee and contemplating the Corpus Christi Caller-Times financial section. She had been Whit’s first stepmother, his mother’s oldest and dearest friend. Georgie and Babe had married more out of friendship and a mutual hope to provide six devastated boys a mother, but those reasons shriveled under the never-setting sun of reality. Georgie, relentlessly practical and blunt, and Babe, a roaring drunk still in love with an absent first wife, only lasted three stormy, legendary years. The six Mosley boys all loved Georgie without reserve. They knew the bullet she had taken for them. Babe had bought the Shell Inn for her the Christmas after their divorce, a parting gift, and Georgie kept the Mosley name to irritate him.

‘Tell your daddy he should’ve listened to me about those overseas stock funds,’ Georgie said as Whit entered. ‘I’m making a killing. I could buy and sell Babe’s ass.’

‘He’s more conservative with his money,’ Whit said.

‘I would think anyone who imports firm young former Communist flesh into his bed would be receptive to new ideas.’ Georgie kissed his cheek – she smelled of lip balm and oranges – and steered him to his corner table where Patsy Duchamp and Tim O’Leary sat.